


Piano Babe

by dovingbird



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 22:10:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1151372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dovingbird/pseuds/dovingbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being in the Bottom 3 yet again, Elise finds some comfort - and a break from the past - in Colton Dixon. Rated for language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piano Babe

"Tough crowd."  
  
Elise glanced over her shoulder and quirked a brow. "What?"  
  
She still wasn't used to the bright yellow cockatiel hair that was currently bobbing around in her doorway, but even she had to admit that it was a nice change. Colton leaned against her room's doorframe, and she wondered not for the first time if it hurt like hell when he went through the bleaching. "The judges. The votes. Tough crowd."  
  
Right. There it was again, that sickening stab right in the center of her chest, the one that reminded her that maybe she wasn't all she thought she was cracked up to be. She frowned and looked down at the bed. "Yeah, well..." Words weren't really her talent. Singing was. She fumbled uselessly for a few long seconds before she sighed and tugged the headband from her hair. "It's whatever."  
  
"It's not cool is what it is." He started to step inside, but hesitated. "...can I come in?"  
  
"Yeah, sure."  
  
He did. "You kicked tail last night."  
  
"Not enough, apparently." She sank down onto her bed and splayed her fingers out over the silk of her dress. It didn't feel real against her skin. She was a rocker, not a glam girl. This just felt...funky. "Doesn't matter how much ass I kick. It's never enough."  
  
"Stop it." He hesitated next to her dresser, eyeing it for a moment before he leaned against it carefully. He didn't take all that well to being alone with a woman in her bedroom, she noticed. Was it his devotion to his faith? Did he think he was making a bad name for himself? Or was he like her now, conscious that there might always be a camera everywhere, right when you least expected it?  
  
"I think I'm allowed to have a pity party after tonight."  
  
He snorted, but said nothing else.  
  
The tentative awkwardness in the air between them was incredibly familiar to her by now. It'd been there for weeks, ever since they'd moved into this mansion, and she still couldn't figure out precisely where it came from.  
  
It was in the little things. It was how they were the late-risers of the group, how they'd be stumbling around the kitchen together trying to get a bowl of cereal and choke it down before they had to get to wardrobe for the next Ford music video shoot and how it meant they'd be fighting over the last of the milk almost every time before Colton decided he'd be the gentleman yet again. It was in how they'd be waiting backstage for their next group performance and how their eyes would meet for a long moment before they'd look away simultaneously. It was in how he'd give her a chin pop and a smile and a thumbs up when she was on her way in to see Jimmy and whatever celebrity they'd gotten together to instruct them for that week. Under all of that was this bizarre current, something that made her antsy and anxious, something that had her playing with her hair for a little longer every morning for reasons that she couldn't figure out.  
  
Elise noticed over the past ten or twelve years how musicians had the inexplicable need to have something in their hands at all times, like Phil absently playing with a guitar pick at all times, so it wasn't any surprise to her when Colton's fingers lingered over one of the knick-knacks on her desk. For perhaps the first time in the whole time she'd known him she watched his good manners fail him. Much to her joint surprise and horror he plucked up the little piano statuette and turned it this way and that, examining it, without ever once asking permission. "Careful!" she blurted. He looked up at her, eyes narrowed in curiosity, and she realized that she was sitting on the edge of her bed suddenly. She didn't really remember how she'd gotten there.  
  
"Why, what is it?" he asked. He didn't set it back down, but his hands stilled, and that was enough to calm her heart again.  
  
She hesitated. "Nothing, I just..."  
  
A smile slowly spread across his lips, the observant little bastard. Her cheeks flushed. "Nothing."  
  
"No, I mean, it's dumb, don't worry about it. I just don't want it getting broken."  
  
"Tell me about it."  
  
"Colton..."  
  
"What? What's wrong with it?"  
  
"Nothing, I just-"  
  
"Then tell me." He laughed. "C'mon."  
  
Dammit. Well, she wasn't getting out of this one, was she? She shoved her hair out of her eyes with a sigh. "Fine. Fine! Fine." She paused, trying to figure out the right way to say the words. Was there some arrangement she could use that wouldn't make her sound pathetic? "It's, uh...it's from my ex-boyfriend."  
  
Colton's eyebrows shot skyward. He studied it a little closer.  
  
"We actually met when I was performing at this bar. It was a real old-timey kind of place, y'know, the one with a grand piano stuck in the center of a stage and stuff. They hired me to sing for the night and I decided I'd go full-out jazzy babe. You know what I mean?"  
  
He looked up at her, eyelids drooping languidly. "I think so."  
  
"Like, floor-length red dress, leaning on the piano, all that shit, y'know? So I sang for a few hours, whatever, and when it was over this guy buys me a drink. He was super-cute, super-sweet, super...well, anyway, we had a good time, I gave him my number, we hit it off..." She was rambling again. She hated when she did this. She rubbed at her forehead with another sigh. "Anyway, he got me that about a month later, and I've just kind of kept it with me ever since."  
  
Colton was silent for a long moment as he tilted the piano statuette this way and that, lips pursing in thought. It took a bit of time, infinitely long seconds where Elise wanted to bury herself in her pillows, before he spoke again. "Why?"  
  
"Why?" She frowned and lowered her eyebrows. Of all the questions she thought she'd hear, she didn't think it'd be that one. "Well...I just...I like thinking of that night. It makes me feel powerful. Sexy. Stuff like that." She laughed nervously, cheeks flaming again. "A lot of good it's doing me these days."  
  
"What are you talking about? You're awesome!"  
  
"No, not awesome enough, because you know why?" She leaned forward again, digging her fingers into the bedsheets. "You know tonight when they were talking about the powerhouse girl singers here? Jessica? Hollie? How even Skylar was going after that? Guess who didn't get mentioned?"  
  
He stared at her, but there was this look on his face that she didn't really get. Was it confusion? Pain? Annoyance? She was shit at reading faces, and he should know that by now. He should. No matter how awkward things could get between them, he was still probably the person she respected the most in this whole damn house, and she'd spent so much time watching him that she thought he would've done the same with her. He should be able to read her mind by now.  
  
Her thoughts came to an abrupt stop. Where the hell had any of that just come from?  
  
She was embarrassed. She shouldn't have told him any of that. She stood up and stumbled toward Colton, reaching out to take the piano from his hand. "Just forget it, okay? It doesn't matter. No one would care if I was elimi-" Her words crashed into each other when she realized he wasn't letting the piano go. She choked on the rest of the word. But, at the same time, she didn't let go of her half of the statuette either. She glanced up. She met his eyes. She unconsciously registered the heat coming off his fingers, faint as it was, and realized that if she shifted her hand even just a millimeter, she'd be touching him, and for some reason that gave her that weird fizzy feeling in her stomach.  
  
This was bullshit. He was a kid. He was the age of the students she taught back in Mount Pleasant. This. Was not. Okay.  
  
"You're wrong," he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower timbre that made her heart kickstart. "We'd all care."  
  
"Yeah, right," she whispered. "They all want their record contracts. I'm just another competitor."  
  
"They?"  
  
Silence. His eyes flicked over her face, as if he was absorbing every detail that he could, and his gaze softened to a smooth, chocolate brown.  
  
"Not me?" He was whispering now too. He needed to stop. She couldn't handle this.  
  
"I-I just...I don't..."  
  
"You're right, though." He tilted his head to the side. His eyes fell to her lips for a brief moment, just a millisecond of him losing his gentlemanly self-control, but she saw it. She saw it and it shot fire through her body. "If you go? I'll miss the heck out of you."  
  
The fire dimmed. And then it shot directly into her fingertips, burning them to the point of pain. But it wasn't her who had moved her hand. It was him. She jolted away from his touch with a gasp, flinging her hands back into the air, and watched in horror as the statuette fell to the ground and shattered into innumerable pieces.  
  
They stood there in shock, both staring down at the porcelain granules, before his voice broke the silence. "Oh geez." And then a thoughtful pause. "Man, if there was any time for cursing, it'd be now."  
  
"Shit fuck damn hell bastard." Elise helpfully filled the air with what Colton was reluctant to give as she knelt down and picked up the largest chunk.  
  
"I am so freaking sorry."  
  
"I can't believe that-"  
  
"I can get some superglue-"  
  
"-after all this time-"  
  
"-or some tape or something."  
  
"-it's just...damn."  
  
Colton picked up a few chunks himself, his eyes pained. "Oh man, I feel like crap now."  
  
Elise stared at the broken relic of her past. She waited for the pain. She waited for the inevitable heartbreak of the memory. She waited for the dirt to stir up, for her to remember how it felt to be cheated on, to be worthless, to be the woman that nobody cared about because you were just a few pegs beneath whoever they chose above you...  
  
She waited.  
  
She kept waiting.  
  
"...dude," she whispered, frowning down at the floor. "I don't care."  
  
Colton looked up at her. "What?"  
  
"I don't care. I don't care! That's awesome!" And she celebrated by dropping the piece she held. It broke into two more pieces against the hardwood. She was grinning like an idiot and probably looked really stupid but she realized she didn't care about that either.  
  
Colton looked at a complete loss. "I-I'll buy you another one, if you want."  
  
"Don't you dare, sweetheart," she announced gleefully. "You're right. You're totally right. Fuck the past, man. Fuck yesterday and fuck tonight. Let's focus on tomorrow. I'll rock their world on Wednesday."  
  
He was still confused, but at least he was smiling now too, caught up in her excitement, in her effervescence. "Now that's the Elise I like to hear."  
  
She came to her feet and brushed her gown off with a laugh. "Come on." She held out her hand to help him up, but this time when he took it and she felt that rabid tingling she didn't let go, not even when he was standing tall again. "Help me find a broom."


End file.
